María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro is Senior Lecturer at the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She first entered the Department as a research fellow after obtaining a competitive national scholarship to complete her doctoral studies at Zaragoza University. She wrote her PhD dissertation on Narrative Strategies in Charles Palliser’s The Quincunx, The Sensationist and Betrayals, under the supervision of Dr Susana Onega. She currently teaches English literature modules in the Degree in English Studies. She coordinated the Erasmus Exchange Program between the Department and: the University of Chester (UK) from 2005 to 2023; and the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) from 2006 to 2023. She is one of the editorial board members of Miscelánea. A Journal of English and American Studies, published by the Department, and she collaborates with other journals as well as with conference scientific committees. 

From 2003 to the present, María Jesús Martínez-Alfaro has been one of the members of a team of departmental lecturers working on contemporary literature(s) in English and whose research is financed by the Aragonese Government. She also participated, from 1995 to 2021, in several research projects financed by the Spanish government and the European Regional Development Fund. She has been a member of the University Research Institute for Employment, Digital Society and Sustainability (IEDIS-University of Zaragoza) since May 2021 to the present.

Dr Martínez-Alfaro’s research focuses on contemporary narrative in English and, more specifically, on late 20th- and 21st-century British fiction, with a special interest in trauma theory, memory studies, and Holocaust literature. She co-edited the books Beyond Borders: Redefining Generic and Ontological Boundaries (C. Winter, 2002) and Memory Frictions in Contemporary Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). She has published on authors like Martin Amis, John Fowles, Peter Ackroyd, A. S. Byatt, Charles Palliser, Art Spiegelman, Jane Yolen, Cynthia Ozick, Lisa Goldstein, Louise Murphy, Rachel Seiffert, Norah Krug and David Szalay, among others, in volumes of collected essays (Routledge, Palgrave, Brill, etc.) and in journals such as the European Journal of English Studies (EJES); Twentieth-Century Literature; JNT. Journal of Narrative Theory; Journal of the Short Story in English (JSSE); Critical Engagements; Atlantis; The European Legacy; and Anglia, to name some. The results of her research are also regularly shared with the scientific community in conferences such as those organised by the Department of English and German Philology of the University of Zaragoza (Spain), the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies (AEDEAN) and the British Association for Contemporary Literary Studies (BACLS).